The End of the Beginning
by Alby Mangroves
Summary: Winner of Best AU in the Remember When This Was Fun contest. A dog barks, the wind whistles, and a car honks in the distance, but he remains silent. Alone. Canon, Charlie Swan. Angst.


Written for the **Remember When This Was Fun** contest. Find the other entries here:

www . fanfiction . net/u/3826985/RememberWhenThisWasFun

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Thanks to ysar for her beta magic and to Anna Faze, who writes the best Charlie EVER in her wonderful story, 'Prism'.

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**Prompt: **A dog barks, the wind whistles, and a car honks in the distance, but he remains silent. Alone.

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A dog barks, the wind whistles, and a car honks in the distance, but he remains silent. Alone.

All that noise outside, but the echo of Renée's voice is all he can hear.

_Just let me go, Charlie. It didn't work out, okay?_

Her words hang in the air as if she has blown smoke rings. They scar the space between them until she turns and walks out of the house.

Charlie feels the eerie quiet settling into his bones already, and Renée hasn't even gone yet. Well, not physically anyway, though that's about to change.

Taking a few steps, he finds himself shoeless on the front porch, recording all the details of this horrible moment; it's all wrong, so goddamn wrong, and now it's real.

All his nerve endings are on high alert, as though he should be doing something. He doesn't know what. He finds himself opening and closing his fists, catching air his lungs can't seem to absorb.

In the driveway, Renée's Volkswagen backfires and then begins to roll away, and Charlie stupidly finds himself thinking if she'd just told him earlier, he could have had it serviced before she left.

Before she left him.

Frozen to the spot, Charlie wants to run after the car, to shed the remnants of his dignity in a final stab at keeping her, though he knows it's useless.

In those ten words, she said everything she needed to say, though they'd been arguing for hours...or maybe months.

_Just let me go, Charlie. It didn't work out, okay?_

He'd do it, too—run after her—if not for old Mrs. Darcy, who's watching from behind her curtains across the road, probably relishing the most exciting thing to happen in Forks today. She's been watching Renée pack the car for a half-hour at least, he's sure. Charlie can feel her eyes boring into the side of his face, wondering what horrible thing he did to make his young wife up and leave him, taking their baby away.

And then, he doesn't care about what the old bat will see or think of him, because in the back of the car, a little mobile of shells and cardboard cut-out stars begins a mad dance to the halting movements of Renée's car, jolting from what she thinks is the sticky shift, and Charlie knows is her dodgy clutch technique.

In a split-second, Charlie remembers the late afternoon sun in Renée's hair as she'd worked on her little project, glue and glitter and colored paper spread out on the kitchen table in place of dinner.

She'd been heavily pregnant then, her breasts deliciously round and head filled with a million things she wanted to make for the baby, probably all at the same time. Charlie's eyes had been so full of her in that moment that he'd have missed the end of the world if it had happened directly under his feet.

_Just let me go, Charlie. It didn't work out, okay?_

The mobile sways, glinting, and Charlie can't process this. Not okay. This is not okay.

That's _Bella_ in that car, that's his _baby girl_ whom he might not see again for a very long time, and so he runs, before he even knows he's doing it.

"Wait, wait!" he shouts, knowing his wife never looks back.

Sure enough, she's oblivious to his mad dash and shocked to find him running alongside the Volks and pounding on her window. Her foot abruptly finds the brake and Charlie overshoots, coming to a stop a few steps in front of the car, skidding with his arms out for balance.

In the periphery, Mrs. Darcy's curtains flutter like the scared thing inside his ribcage.

Renée blinks, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel and perplexed annoyance on her face, and in that moment, Charlie's hopes sink right along with his stomach. He can see it in her blank eyes; she's already gone and left Forks behind. He's in her way like a fallen branch on the highway.

Feeling ridiculous, he lowers his arms and just stands there, wondering what the hell he was thinking. Renée's face is an echo of that exact sentiment as she winds down her window and leans out.

"What's wrong?" she asks, as though she hadn't just given _those ten word_s as her parting gift, only moments ago. As if they're not suspended between being family and strangers, with a yawning great hole of things unsaid festering right under Charlie's feet.

For a moment, Charlie could swear there's pity there, and he might be many things, but pitiable isn't one of them. So, he stands a little straighter and reins himself in tighter, though his nails dig trenches into his palms.

"Nothing." _Everything_.

Renée sighs, resigned to letting him do whatever it is he thinks he must do, and Charlie opens his mouth, maybe to scream at her for being so goddamned selfish, or maybe to apologize for being a nuisance, but what comes out is, "Your windows. You can't even see out of them; they're filthy."

"What?" she narrows her eyes a little, probably wondering what the hell he's up to. Charlie might as well be wearing the same face, because he has no idea, either, except that he's selling the rest of his pride, so he can buy a few more moments of desperation in his own drive.

"Your windows. Let me give them a quick wash before you go. It's not safe."

Renée smiles—her windows _are _filthy— with what might be relief, as though he's finally seeing sense, and Charlie goes to fetch the bucket and sponge from the laundry, his heart pumping wildly and his blood beating itself to froth inside his veins.

In a daze, he wills his shaking hands to fill the bucket with soapy water and makes his way out to the driveway again, half expecting Renée to have gone to spare them both this ridiculous, humiliating farce, but she's still there, sitting motionless in the idling Volkswagen.

Behind the shotgun seat, little hands bat at the mobile, sending it slapping against the window, and Charlie's chest aches like his lungs have been carved out of their cradle.

He turns away from those pink, baby hands and goes to work with the soapy sponge. First the windshield, and he lifts the wipers until they poke out like antennae, carefully washing where they normally lie flush against the glass, collecting leaves and debris from the road.

Then, the corners where the wipers don't reach, all the while not looking at Renée behind the wheel, sitting stiffly in her yellow dress which flatters her like she's nineteen again.

She was so sweet on him back then, so gorgeous and full of life. She'd made the choice look easy when they fell into this life together, the one they're not going to live now.

The one she's taking away in the back seat of her car.

He almost falters then, manic laughter bubbling up inside him like boiling bile, but Mrs. Darcy's curtains move again, and it's just enough distraction to keep his teeth gritted and his façade of sanity intact.

He washes all of the windows, his face knotted so tightly together that his jaw aches. Finally, he reaches the window behind which his daughter sits, and instead of washing, he stares and stares at the dimpled knuckles of Bella's tiny hands, at the curl of her lashes, her chubby knees._ Don't forget me_, he wills, throwing his thoughts at her, hoping they'll stick.

And then there is no more time, no more reasons for them to dawdle. Sitting silently behind the wheel, Renee has waited for him to finish- the most accommodating and patient she's been in their entire life together.

She leans into the car so he can see her through the window and mouths a silent, "Thank you, Charlie," and that's it. This moment of horror is also Charlie's only goodbye.

He stands back, dropping the bucket to the ground as she begins to drive away.

Does Renée expect him to wave? He doesn't know. His hands hang uselessly against his legs, like dead weights. He curls them into fists and cuts tiny half moons into his palms, just for the hell of it.

Perversely, life goes on while he stands in his driveway forever, with an upturned bucket at his feet and dirty water splashed all over his socked feet.

A dog barks, the wind whistles, and a car honks in the distance, but he remains silent. Alone.

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**A/N:** Thanks for reading! Voting begins soon and there will be loads of great entries coming in before the looming deadline, if you're looking for some oneshot action.


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